10/3/2005: Amazing cactus
 

http://cellar.org/2005/amazingcactus.jpg

"Did you know there was a Botany Photo of the Day?" Magilla asked while sending this image along. Noted.

IotD is proud to be one of the net's "X of the X" sites, and this "brain cactus" makes the day because it's beautiful. In a wider shot, it's not quite so beautiful, but still interesting:

http://cellar.org/2005/amazingcactus2.jpg

BPotD explains that the brains are a "morphological variant of the species Mammillaria elongata DC., or golden star cactus. The distinct morphology of this and other brain cacti, known as cristate or crested growth, is caused by an apical meristem gone awry."

I hate it when my apical meristem goes awry.

By the way, some more techie jargon! The first image up there is another one of those images that really is hard on the JPEG format. The original from the BPotD was over 300K in size - massive. It could only reasonably compress to about half that size for the above display. (I rehost the images locally so I don't use people's bandwidth, and so that the IotD remains over time even when people's hosted images go away.) It's because of the many colors and many small but detailed shapes in the image; they don't compress well.

Well worth the bandwidth, UT. Thanks, as always, for bringing such a bounty of interesting stuff to look at to our otherwise rather normal lives! :)

Saguaro elongata
http://www.mipco.com/gifs/PlantGenitals/Cactus72.jpg

The brain cactus variant here doesn't seem like a very efficient way of gathering sunlight. I wonder how well this one would prosper compared to a golden star cactus that hasn't had its apical meristem go awry? Would it thrive as well?

Looks like a big bowl of moldy dog jakes.
JUST JOKING!!!!!
Very interesting, even if its meristem is awry. We rarely have botanical images. Me likes. Thanks guys.

Reminded me of this pic of a bit of moss taken this weekend camping.

Brain Cactus, eh.... Makes you think....

We had some of those in our back yard, they weren't molded into a hemispherical shape, but they were the same kind of cactus. I didn't discover them until we had lived there 3 or 4 years, since they were hidden in a long rectangular planter buried in the ground. They survived pretty well without any human intervention in Fresno weather. Just a big bulky mass of them, there was no real way to seperate them (the spines are soft and small enough you can sort of handle them if you're careful).

:smack:

Good way to conserve water though.... and keep dangly bits from being nibbled. :biggrin:

Sunglight is usually not a problem in the common cactus climates. The shape does, however, appear to be rather efficient for catching/holding moisture.

[editted] Hehe, guess Bruce and I were typing at about the same time...

um...isn't anybody going to say that barefoot serpent's pic looks like a cactus with a giant hard-on? No one?

god, i need to write my paper. I never will, though. I'll just keep looking at giant cacti and chew gum. I suck so bad.

That cactus doesn't have a hard-on, it has a prick.

Now THAT was good. :lol:

prolly not too snuggly either.